


Kilroy

by RiverTam



Series: Mr. Roboto [2]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Aphasia, Automated Book Retrieval System, Brock's a monster and he knows it clap your hands, Gen, HYDRA Husbands, Headaches, Jack Rollins has powers, M/M, Memories returning over time, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Retrograde Amnesia, Reunions, Second Chances, Starting Over, Transgender, Traumatic Brain Injury, Witness Protection, going back to college, migraines, saying "I love you"
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-18
Updated: 2020-06-18
Packaged: 2021-03-03 22:07:47
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 14,707
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24782839
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RiverTam/pseuds/RiverTam
Summary: Jack continues down the winding path of recovery.  So does Brock.
Relationships: Jack Rollins & Natasha Romanov, Jack Rollins & Original Female Character(s), Jack Rollins & Original Male Character(s), Jack Rollins & Sam Wilson, Jack Rollins/Brock Rumlow
Series: Mr. Roboto [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1792483
Comments: 8
Kudos: 17





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> **Warnings**
> 
>   * Unsuccessful ambush and attempted murder
>   * References to SERE training (Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape) specifically in how it’s insanely stressful and intense
>   * In a flashback and offscreen, a minor character gets roughed up
>   * Age of Ultron happens (mostly offscreen)
>   * A character struggles with saying the words I love you even though they feel it and know it
>   * Accidentally blowing one’s cover
>   * Worrying about loved ones while they’re away
>   * A character walks in on two others fooling around in bed
>   * References to a character being transgender made in private by people that know they are transgender, with the consent of the transgender person
>   * Snapshots of the Battle of Wakanda during Infinity War, including Vision’s (offscreen) death
> 


Thanks to the diet chart taped to the front of the refrigerator, Jack’s food budget triples overnight.

Brock gags just a bit as he finishes off the last of his protein drink, then chucks the bottle at the recycle bin. It rattles as it settles to the bottom, and Brock slumps onto the kitchen table with a groan. “I don’t know what that was,” he complains, voice muffled through his arms, “but that was _not_ butterscotch.”

“The strawberry ones are less disgusting.” Scowling at his laptop, Jack taps the arrow keys until he gets to the line of code the compiler error pointed him to. “I can grab a different brand next time I’m out, too.”

“Maybe we should take out stock in the beef industry. Fuck knows we’ll be buyin’ a lot of it.”

Jack puts in that goddamn semicolon he forgot, saves and exits, then recompiles his program. “Did Romanoff manage to get you on payroll?”

“Nah, but she did say she’d work on unfreezing all my assets.”

He can’t help it; he cracks up. It’s a terrible, terrible joke and it really shouldn’t even be anywhere approaching funny, but, Jack can’t help it.

“You’re hopeless,” Brock says, rolling his eyes affectionately. “Should have enough for a down payment on a bigger place, once all that clears.”

“Yeah?” Jack sits back and smiles, his eyes crinkling.

Standing, Brock walks around the table to lean down for a kiss. “Yeah. Now get your ass into the shower because I wanna hit the gym for a bit, and apparently I’m not allowed to spar with civilians.”

  
  


“So,” Jack says as he weaves the wrap between his fingers, “how much of a show do you feel like putting on?”

Stretching one arm over his head, Brock grimaces. “Well, you turned into Usain Bolt and I’m made of toothpicks now, so maybe we just start with the basics.”

Half an hour later, Brock’s blood is up, he’s grinning from ear to ear, and Jack’s just doing his best to dodge.

“Jesus _fuck!”_ Jack yelps as Brock spins into a kick that he only just manages to evade. “I did _not_ miss being your goddamn punching bag!”

It doesn’t take long for Brock to tire out, in the end, since it’ll be at least a few months before he’s worked off the worst of the calorie deficit. He puts his hands up, then leans over on his knees and pants for breath.

Jack puts a hand on his shoulder and leans down. “You okay?”

Nodding, Brock lazily waves him away, then closes his eyes. His nose is dripping sweat and his hair is sticking up in every direction, but the tension in his eyes is gone and his smile is relaxed.

They end up walking back to the apartment covered in sweat and smelling like gym so that Jack doesn’t have to use the communal showers. Once they get home, though, Jack has to laugh as he gets herded toward the bathroom, where Brock crowds him into the corner of the shower stall and makes it abundantly clear that they’ll still be showering at the same time.

  
  


It doesn’t escape the notice of Jack’s myriad of busybody coworkers that not only is he suddenly wearing a wedding ring, but now there’s a cute guy at the front desk asking for directions to the ARS technician’s office. And he’s carrying a bag of takeout. And wearing a ring of his own.

When the reference librarian starts calling Brock ‘Persephone,’ Jack laughs so hard it’s several minutes before he can breathe well enough to explain the joke to his perplexed husband.

The next time Brock shows up, he stops by the reference desk on his way down to smile sweetly at the librarian and set a large glass vase of grain stalks on her desk.

The library staff decide he’s a keeper.

  
  


The first day of spring break, Jack and Brock move into their new house.

It’s closer to campus, has an actual back yard, enough bedrooms for Brock to have a Batcave, and a large enough driveway for two cars. Naturally, Brock fills one of those parking spots with a motorcycle. And, naturally, Brock spends his first afternoon as the proud new owner of a 2015 Victory Gunner giving the kids rides around the neighborhood.

Cassie giggles the whole time. Ryan starts researching 250cc starter bikes. Kevin decides he’s never getting on anything with two wheels ever again.

  
  


Jack’s elbows-deep in dishwater when his phone rings. Rinsing and drying his hands quickly, he gives his phone an interested frown when he sees Kevin’s name on the screen, and answers.

The first thing he hears is several hoarse, wet coughs. Then, “ _Hey, man, you got any formal wear?”_

Raising his eyebrows, Jack blinks a few times. “If you’re telling me I need to start planning to attend your funeral after you cough up both your lungs, this is certainly a creative way to do so.”

Kevin laughs, which quickly shifts into more coughing, and Jack winces with momentary guilt.

_“Nah, it’s just, Cassie has that engineering department social thing tonight, and we got tickets for two, but I’m a walking biohazard right now. Ryan’s already home for the weekend.”_

Checking over the calendar stuck to the fridge next to Brock’s diet chart, Jack purses his lips. “I think I can pull something together, yeah. What time should I be at the dorm?”

_“Any time before 6:15. Thanks, man.”_

Jack writes in the event on the calendar as he hangs up, then glances over his shoulder as he hears Brock walk into the kitchen. “What was that?” Brock asks as he puts a hand at the base of Jack’s spine and looks at the calendar.

“Rent-a-date call, Cassie needs arm candy for a night. What do you think I should wear?”

“Mm.” Brock turns to nose at the skin under Jack’s ear. “I think we can find something, as long as I get to take you back out of it when you get home.”

  
  


Jack ends up settling on business casual with a leather jacket, since the blazer SHIELD supplied him with is tailored for Jack From Before.

Still, Cassie wolf-whistles when she walks out of the dorm’s main doors in a cocktail dress and heels. “You clean up nice.”

It’s already starting to get a little chilly as the sun’s on its way down, so Jack shrugs off his jacket and drapes it over her shoulders. “I brought a tie if you think I’ll need it.”

She laughs and shakes her head, clutching the jacket around her. Her hair bounces a bit as they head down the steps to the sidewalk. “I don’t think the professors are going to be wearing ties, you’re probably fine.” After a moment, she looks up at him. “The hubbie’s okay with this?”

“We’ve known each other twenty years, been together for fifteen of ‘em, and married for twelve,” Jack answers with a smile. “He was more surprised that Kevin called in the first place.”

“Well, between one of his frat brothers and the gold star gay vet…”

He can’t help but snicker a bit. “Fair point. Well, I promise to deliver you back to him with your virtue intact.”

“Oh, my virtue hasn’t _been_ intact in a long time.”

“And I did _not_ need to know that.”

Cassie bumps into his arm companionably and grins.

“So, what’s this department event for, then?”

“Senior project presentations, catered dinner, music and dancing, mingling and sucking up to the professors for upper-division courses.”

“Meritocracy at its finest.” A group of energetic frat boys trundle by, talking loudly about a new video game. One of them says _Sniper Elite 3_ and Jack can’t help but scoff and shake his head.

“Not a fan of video games?” Cassie asks wryly.

Jack scratches the back of his neck. “I really don’t understand the draw. Screentime migraines aside, playing a video game where I kill things isn’t exactly my idea of fun.”

Making a sympathetic noise, Cassie leans into him for a moment. They walk by the art building before she says anything else. “Were you and Fred in the same unit?”

“Yeah.” Jack’s lips twitch into a smile involuntarily like they do every time Brock’s cover name is said. _Fred Kruger._ Someone has a sick sense of humor. “Used to be his second in command, before I got discharged.”

Cassie barks out a laugh and gives him a skeptical look. “Is that even allowed? Dating your- what was he? Captain?”

“Commander, actually. And no, no it wasn’t.” Smirking, Jack swings his shoulders with a little bit of a strut. “And neither was marrying him.”

“How’d you guys get away with _that?”_

“If I told you,” Jack grins, “I’d have to kill you.”

Thankfully, Cassie laughs rather than press the issue, and that’s about the time they arrive at the convention hall anyway.

  
  


The food’s not half bad, some of the senior projects are actually pretty interesting, and one of the grad students threatens to shanghai Jack into joining the salsa dancing team after he and Cassie have a little fun on the dance floor. The kids at their table find it _hilarious_ when Jack is surprised by the fact that universities have salsa dancing teams.

  
  


Jack waits for the main doors of Cassie’s dorm to close behind her before he turns to walk back to his house. Pulling out his phone, he sends a quick _on my way back_ to Brock, then slides his hands into his jacket pockets and enjoys the brisk night air on his face. A group of students across the way giggles about something, and Jack can’t help but smile a little; it’s nice, these small, refreshing little moments that remind him that the world keeps spinning on.

There’s a lot of life he’s missed out on, mostly due to his amnesia, but in part because he’s spent a lot of the past twenty years sitting in Quinjets and crawling through mud. It’s a little hard to stay up to date on internet culture when the only external communications the team has available is an unreliable satellite phone.

But even though there’s still wreckage in the Potomac from Project Insight being emphatically discontinued, even though they’re still running chemical cleanup on the water, and even though they’re still excavating the rubble on Little Island, life still goes on. People still go to school, construction crews are finally taking building projects now that the demolition work on the Triskelion is better under control. SHIELD is, both factions of it, still sticking around and trying to fight the good fight. Captain America keeps punching Nazis, kicking ass, taking names, and pissing off politicians.

Life still goes on.

Jack waves at the dad who lives four doors down from him, just getting in from a late shift at the hospital. Everyone in his neighborhood tends to keep to themselves, but they’re friendly enough that it’s not awkward. Hell, all the cookies and cakes and housewarming casseroles people brought over had made the first few weeks of Brock’s bulk-up diet significantly more enjoyable.

It’s a quiet neighborhood, and Jack and Brock have the house at the end of a medium-sized cul de sac full of refreshingly normal civilians. One of the neighbors has decorated for Easter the way most people do for Christmas or Halloween.

The colorful, metallic eggs peppering the hedges draw his attention to the degree that he doesn’t notice a shadow that’s just slightly the wrong shape as he walks past.

He’s two steps beyond the Easter house when every hair on his body suddenly stands on end. It’s not enough warning for him to do anything, though, because something slams into his back hard enough to send him sprawling across the sidewalk.

Jack rolls, twists, and comes up in a crouch facing his attacker. Some forgotten muscle memory has a knife already in his hand, twin balisong handles spinning as he flicks the blade out.

“Oh, that’s cute,” they say as they stalk toward him, and it’s a female voice that belongs to a stocky body, and something tells Jack she hits nearly as hard as Brock does. She’s wearing black fatigues, sturdy boots, gloves, and a balaclava. “Lucky for you, I don’t feel like turning this into a gunfight.”

Jack springs to the side to dodge when she lunges at him and uses his foot to give her forward momentum a little extra encouragement. She twists, catlike, and jumps back at him faster than most people should be able to.

Most people that weren’t trained to the same level he was, that is.

Even though he’s already moving to counter, arms rising automatically, she still manages to take the fight to the ground and pin his knife hand down. Her other hand latches on to his neck, squeezing hard.

“Traitor,” she snarls through thin black fabric, glaring straight into his eyes. “I trusted you. I carried out your orders, I would have laid down my _life_ for you-”

Jack tries to throw her off, tries to break her grip on his neck, but he’s simply lost the muscle mass and conditioning needed to overpower her. “Don’t take this personally,” he grits out, straining against her, “but I have no fucking idea who you are.”

“Wipe him and start over, huh?” Her head tilts to the side and her eyes get wider, bordering on manic. “Tell ‘em everything you know, then sit your pasty white ass down in that magic chair and let ‘em give you a new life? Talk about WITSEC, you bastard, you _sold us out-”_

As Jack’s vision starts to dim, there’s a fresh, bubbling, burning rage building up in him. He grits his teeth, tightens his hand on her wrist, and stares into what he can see of her face. “I lost _everything,”_ Jack growls. “You think I sold you out? I’m fucked in the head! It wasn’t the Chair, Romanoff gave me a TBI!”

“What kind of shitty excuse is-” The rest of her words are lost in a shriek as she recoils from him; the sleeve of her jacket is smoldering and smoking.

Jack takes advantage of that to plant his fist in her face as hard as he fucking can.

Two rapid gunshots ring out, an expert double-tap, followed closely by one more. The woman jerks as two rounds pierce her chest, then crumples as the third finds her head.

Jack doesn’t notice her body fall to the sidewalk, though, because he’s staring at his hands. They glow like there’s a fire blazing under his skin, the air shimmers around them, and the occasional spark dances over his skin. The knife clatters to the concrete, forgotten, and Jack’s panic makes his hands flash blinding white as the fire inside him erupts into flames dancing over his arms up to the elbows.

Someone’s talking to him, reaching forward, reaching for him, and Jack scoots back as far as he can until his back hits something that he belatedly realizes is a car.

“Whoa whoa whoa, hey, not near the- c’mon, sweetheart-” Hands grab him by the collar and haul him away, even though his arms are still _burning-_

Something stings on his neck, and he’s-


	2. Chapter 2

The first thing he notices when he claws his way back up into consciousness is that his entire body feels like one giant sunburn.

The second thing he notices is that the reason he woke up is because whatever’s in his stomach wants out, _right now._

Jack hauls himself up, but hands are already on his shoulders to guide him toward a bucket on the floor next to the bed he’s in. Only after he’s done gagging into the bucket does he realize it’s actually his bed, the one he shares with Brock, and the hands holding his shoulders are definitely not Brock’s.

“Hey, man,” Sam says, quiet and calm, “that’s good. Get it out. Better out than in.”

“Ain’t anything in to get out,” Jack rasps back and slumps against the bedspread, panting.

Raised voices drift through the house, muffled by the closed bedroom door. Brock is shouting at someone, not actually proper yelling, but that steely, hear-him-everywhere tone that made anyone with a self-preservation instinct run for the hills during STRIKE selections.

Closing his eyes, Jack takes a few more breaths, then rubs his hands over his face.

“She knew where we live! I thought your people were trying to _protect_ him!”

Sam gives Jack a weary grimace. Apparently Brock and his audience have been at it a while.

“We could protect him better if he’d agree to carry a firearm.” Romanoff’s voice is flat, calm, and icy.

“You know he doesn’t want to be a part of that world anymore.”

“He needs training, Rum-”

“He _had_ training, and then you went an’ fucked up that training with a goddamn TBI!”

Jack sighs heavily. He’s still feeling shaky enough that it isn’t a good idea to get out of bed, otherwise he’d be on his feet and heading out to try to get everyone to _stop fucking yelling._

There’s a dull thump, the sound of a hand hitting a table surface. Then, low and harsh, “You wanna keep your pet psychopath on a leash, keep me doin’ your dirty work? You do everything in your fuckin’ power to keep my husband alive and whole. Now get _out_ of my _house.”_

Sam’s eyebrows shoot all the way up his forehead and he whistles silently. The front door opens and closes.

Rolling over onto his back, Jack weakly pulls his sleeves down his arms until his knuckles are covered. Maybe if he doesn’t look at his tattoos, doesn’t expose them, doesn’t _think_ about them, he won’t have to deal with the fact that he _lit on fire_ for a little bit longer. He closes his eyes and just tries to go through his body one inch at a time, processing and filing away the pain so that it’s not quite so overwhelming.

The bedroom door creaks quietly as it opens, then a few seconds later the mattress dips as someone sits next to Jack.

“Order through pain, huh?” Sam asks, low. “Don’t tell me you actually believe that, now.”

Brock’s hand presses gently against Jack’s forehead. “You tell me what you believe when you hear the most important thing to you in the world die over the radio.”

“I didn’t die, you melodramatic asshat,” Jack mutters, wrapping his hand around Brock’s wrist and stroking his thumb over the back of his hand.

Sighing sharply, Sam stands up and steps away. “This might be more heartwarming if you both hadn’t tried to kill me. Rollins, you’re good, we worked through that. But you, Rumlow-”

“I had a bullet in my gun with Pierce’s name on it, okay? He gave the orders that got Jack hurt.”

“That’s not what it sounded like when you were tryin’ to rearrange my face.”

Jack opens his eyes and looks up at Brock to see him sigh and shake his head. “I was on live comms with Dispatch. Had to sell it that I was still-”

“Still what? Working for the bad guys?”

“Bad guys, good guys, it all depends what side of the moral compass you’re standing on, kid. SHIELD, HYDRA, two sides of the same goddamn coin. You think they wouldn’t have pivoted the EXO program you were in from pararescue to wetwork? I made my choice, and I chose _him.”_

There’s a long silence where Jack just stares up at the ceiling with tired, aching eyes.

Sam walks to the door of the bedroom, then pauses. “Rollins?”

“Yeah?”

“Don’t die. I don’t wanna see what happens the second time around.” And with that, he leaves and closes the door behind him. The front door to the house opens and closes a few seconds later.

After exhaling, slow and measured, Brock lays down next to Jack and rests a hand over his heart.

“So,” Jack starts, putting his hand over Brock’s and lacing their fingers together, “last night?”

“I heard shouting.” Brock’s quieter, now that the anger’s drained out of him. He looks almost haunted as he stares off into the space on the other side of Jack. “Mercer had you on the ground. I ran out there right as you threw her off, took her out. Cap and his team are dealing with cleanup and reassuring the neighbors.”

Nodding, Jack twirls the fingers of his free hand in a _go on_ motion.

“You weren’t responding and your gifts were starting to make an appearance in a way you couldn’t control. I had to sedate you.”

“Mm. Why’d you have sedatives?”

Brock’s quiet for a bit, then he admits, “It happened the same way the first time around. Your mutations made shit start going haywire while you didn’t know how to use ‘em. We went through that process three, four times a day for a few weeks.”

“When?” Jack’s throat is starting to get sore in a way it hasn’t for a while, closing up on the stress, clamping down on his words.

“SERE training.”

And that makes sense, in a way. Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape training is what turns soldiers into operators, giving them the skills to stay alive and unbroken in environments most personnel would never encounter. It’s intense enough in the military proper, but STRIKE takes it to a whole new level. Jack’s pieced enough fragments together to know he supervised it on several occasions, doing what he did to the STRIKE candidates as he told himself it would make them stronger, more resilient, deadlier. STRIKE’s program exposed its candidates to psychics, gifted agents who could get into a head and rip a soldier apart from the inside out better than anything they could do externally. They absolutely did use the more conventional methods, but by the time a candidate got to STRIKE, they’d usually been around the block a few times. Learning their limits required more extreme methods than what they’d been exposed to before.

Jack supposes that if a latent mutations were to show up, SERE would be the place for it to happen. Better that it comes to light in a closed, controlled environment than in the field where casualties are harder to limit.

“I covered it up,” Brock continues. “Made it look like a gas leak. I managed to convince Pierce to let me work on you myself, since you resisted everything we’d thrown at you by that point. Took you to the Retreat with D’Ambrosio as a medic, locked it to any external communications, and spent three weeks there with you, helping you learn what you’d become.”

Taking a breath, Jack mulls this over. Everything he knows about Brock, every single trait and quirk he’s cataloged and filed over the past twenty years, points to a man that’s fiercely loyal and utterly ruthless. While he would protect and value the men under his command, they were valued and cared for the way one might care for delicate, expensive, vital equipment. Jack _knows_ that Brock’s connections with the people around him end at professional respect. Empathy isn’t something Brock could afford to have crippling his judgment, with his position in the command structure.

Turning to look at Brock, or rather, the fluffy mess of black hair currently resting on his shoulder, Jack gives Brock’s hand a squeeze. “Why?”

It takes long enough for Brock to respond that Jack’s not sure he will. But finally, he sighs, shifts around so he’s propped up on one elbow, and looks Jack in the eye. “Because you were the first person to look at me like a _person,_ not a tool, a means to an end. And you were the first one to treat me like I had the potential to one day, maybe, become a good man.” He leans down to press his lips to the back of Jack’s hand for a moment. “And I got addicted to that, that feeling of… something. Didn’t know what it was, at first. Found out later it’s what it feels like to be loved.”

Jack’s lips twitch into a smile, and he cups his free hand around Brock’s jaw. “I love you too, you beautiful monster.”

“It also helped that you were _really_ good in bed,” Brock says with a shark-like grin. “Gotta admit, I wasn’t expecting you to corner me and kiss me as soon as you got your feet back under you at the Retreat.”

_-hands him a bottle of something that looks like bleach and smells like death. “Drink up, kid.” A hand smacks Jack’s shoulder, then reaches out to twist off the cap. “The only way you’re gonna stop being scared of yourself is if you take control of-”_

Laughing awkwardly, Jack rolls his eyes. “You’re lucky that was after I sobered up.”

Brock’s eyes go soft and he leans into Jack’s hand. “You remember?”

“Some. It’s coming back.” Jack’s throat clicks as he swallows, and Brock immediately pushes himself up and reaches across to the nightstand for a glass of water. He helps Jack sit up, then steadies his hands until he’s got a good grip on the glass.

“We do need to get you back up to speed on this, sweetheart,” Brock says, running his fingers over the markings on Jack’s arm. Amber and gold flickers follow the touch. “But I don’t think we have three weeks and the luxury of going dark the whole time to do that.”

“Midterms soon, yeah.”

“I meant more along the lines of, not if we want to make sure we don’t have a repeat of last night. We don’t know who else is out there, or whether Mercer was working alone.”

Jack nods and takes another sip of water. “What’s the plan?”

Moving to sit cross-legged, Brock rests his elbows on his knees. “First things first, we get a good meal into the both of us. Then we’ll start by trying to trigger memories to return. And if that doesn’t work, well…” He shrugs and gives Jack a wry smile. “Guess we’re gonna trial-and-error it, and see how well I can coach you through it.”

Jack sets the water glass down once it’s empty, and looks at his hands. Little pulses of barely-visible light flow through the markings with every heartbeat, and they glow with something like a resonance when Brock runs his fingertips over them.

“So, aside from being a human glowstick…”

Chuckling, Brock traces his fingers back and forth just to watch the flickers follow them. “You’re an Alpha Class empath who can manifest energy into elemental forces. Shorthand: elemental empath. Basically, you can channel your emotions into fire, ice, electricity, shit like that. And you can influence the emotions of those around you. It’s… kind of terrifying. And beautiful, at the same time. Pure, raw, energy.”

He turns Jack’s hands so the palms are facing up. “Try thinking of a time you’ve been blindingly angry. Or protective. Something that taps into the lizard brain and makes you pick up a weapon and stand up.”

“I’ll burn you,” Jack murmurs.

“I’ve had worse.”

He gives Brock an exasperated look, then shakes his head slightly and closes his eyes.

It’s not hard to pull up a suitable memory, not anymore.

_No one’s able to get a hold of Louis, and the reference librarian is getting worried. He’s never late, not like this. Jack goes looking as soon as he gets permission._

_It takes him about twenty minutes to find Louis on the roof, huddled up in a small alcove out of the wind. One quick look tells Jack there’s no danger of jumping; the kid just needed to be alone for a bit. He walks over, scuffs his boots as he moves so that the kid hears him coming, then sits down next to him with a groan._

_Louis has bruises on his wrists and a large red welt on his cheekbone, some scrapes on his jaw. One eye looks like it might become a shiner pretty soon._

_“What do you want?” Louis asks irritably, and pulls the hood of his sweatshirt up._

_Shrugging, Jack pulls out his notebook and his pencil. “Name and description. Maybe the dorm room number if you’re feeling adventurous.”_

_The kid stares at him blankly for several seconds._

_“Not gonna hurt anyone, just gonna have a few words. Promise.”_

_That evening, Jack slips into a dorm behind another student; it’s embarrassingly easy given how much the campus prides themselves on security. He glances at his notebook, then the elevator, and walks right past the stainless steel doors to take the stairs._

_Fourth floor, Hall A, room 457._

_Jack knocks, then puts his notebook away. The door opens. “Geoff?” When the boy nods, confused, Jack gives him a smile that doesn’t reach his eyes. “Little bird told me you roughed up a friend of mine. You wanna tell me what that was about?”_

A sharp intake of breath pulls Jack back to the present.

When he opens his eyes, white flames cover his hands, licking over Brock’s fingers without burning him. Brock’s grin is as sharp as a knife.

  
  


_Fear,_ Brock says, and Jack flash-freezes a watermelon so quickly that it shatters when he touches it.

_Pain_ has him sparking and crackling like a bolt of lightning.

_Happiness_ raises the ambient temperature in their backyard to balmy summer levels, and blood-red chrysanthemums sprout up in the lawn around Jack’s feet.

  
_Love_ makes time stand still as Brock’s head tips back and his eyes fall closed, raw sensations flooding through him.


	3. Chapter 3

It’s just after dinner on a Monday evening in late April when Brock gets the call. His phone buzzes repeatedly with the _dit-dah_ of a Morse Code A, and he’s scrambling up from the couch to answer it before Jack even realizes it’s not a normal phone call.

“Rumlow,” he says gruffly as soon as he gets the phone to his ear, then his shoulders stiffen. “You’re sure?” Turning to look over his shoulder, he grimaces at Jack. “Yeah, you want me to head to the airstrip or- okay. Copy. I’m on my way.”

Brock slowly pulls his phone away, then takes a breath.

“Must be serious if they’re activating you this soon.” Closing the lid on his laptop, Jack sets it on the coffee table and stands up.

“They found Loki’s scepter. A jet’s already on its way to pick me up.”

A chill runs through Jack; after handing it off to Dr. List three years ago, his team was no longer in the loop on its whereabouts. The one piece of intel they both wished they could give to the Avengers, and neither of them knew. “Well, then, Crossbones, time to go suit up.”

“I’ll be back the day after tomorrow at the latest. Promise.”

“I’ll hold you to that,” Jack murmurs, stepping closer and putting his hands on either side of Brock’s jaw. The scarring is starting to fade, now that Brock’s getting enough calories, and there’s finally some color in his skin again. Leaning in, Jack kisses Brock slowly, then rests their foreheads together. “Be safe. And if you can’t be safe-”

“Be deadly.” Brock tilts his head back up for one more kiss, then turns for the door. “I’ll check in when I can.”

“Love you.”

He gets a hand sign flashed over a shoulder: thumb, index finger, and pinkie extended. It’s as close as Brock normally gets to saying it back, but even if he can’t hear the words themselves, it still makes Jack smile.

The smile fades as the door closes and he hears the truck’s engine roar to life, then fade off into the evening. Jack chews his lip, then looks over at where his own phone sits silently on the coffee table.

At least it lines up well enough with the thirty days of ‘post-deployment leave’ that they’d used as a cover story for Brock’s sudden reappearance last month.

Jack sits down, picks up his phone, and stares at it. He’s starting to remember why he hates being benched on high-stakes missions. The thought makes him scoff, though; is he even benched if he never wanted to be on the team in the first place?

Closing his eyes, he focuses in on the tether firmly anchored someplace behind his sternum, the one that flickers in time with Brock’s heartbeat. The steady, rhythmic pulse is soothing, as familiar to Jack as his own, and soon the tension drops from his shoulders.

A few more breaths help with the rest of the anxiety, then he picks up his laptop and opens it back up.

  
  


Jack’s just rounding the corner into their cul-de-sac the next evening when Brock drives by in the truck and pulls into the driveway. He doesn’t get out immediately, though, and Jack’s worry increases the closer he gets until the door pops open.

The first thing Jack sees is a sleek white splint around Brock’s arm from his knuckles to his elbow, and the second is the gash on his cheekbone still pulled shut by steri-strips.

“You should see the other guy,” Brock grimaces as he gets out, wincing.

Sighing, Jack gets his arm under Brock’s shoulders and pushes the truck door closed. “At least they patched you up before sending you home.”

“I’ll be fine in a few days.” Brock’s not limping, at least not where their neighbors can see, but Jack doesn’t know if that’ll change once the front door closes. “Didn’t feel like stickin’ around for Stark’s party, so I had them fly me south again.”

“Well, I’ll do my best to be just as entertaining as copious amounts of alcohol and useless small talk.”

Brock laughs, then winces and presses a hand to his ribs.

Once they’re inside and Jack has Brock laying on the couch, he leans over him and raises an eyebrow. “Now, are you going to stay put while you’re healing, or do I need to call in a favor with Thor and have him put Mjölnir on your chest?”

He gets a wordless, grudging grumble in return, and pats Brock’s cheek. “I’ll get you something to eat.”

By the time Jack gets back to the couch with some reheated leftovers and a protein drink, Brock’s fallen asleep. The leftovers end up becoming Jack’s dinner and he puts the drink back in the fridge.

He ends up waking Brock up enough to help him shuffle into the bedroom and change into some pajamas, then spends the rest of the night curled around him as Brock sleeps like the dead.

  
  


Brock does heal quickly, with his serum; not as quickly as Rogers, but still significantly faster than baseline. He also inhales nearly everything that’s edible in the house, and Jack has to go grocery shopping again before Brock starts chewing on their boots.

“Holy to _le_ do,” the clerk says when Jack unloads his shopping cart. “You feeding the five thousand or somethin’, Seanny boy?”

Jack laughs and hands over his credit card. “Something like that.”

Within a day of Brock getting home, Jack ends up buying them an Xbox because holy _shit_ Brock is damn near unbearable when he’s bored, and Jack doesn’t want his phone buzzing like a hornet all day while he’s at work and in class.

Somehow, they manage to get through the week without murdering each other, and Brock’s mood steadily improves as his injuries fade. By the time Friday evening rolls around, Brock’s beaten all four _Halo_ games and started in on _Skyrim;_ he’s beating the stuffing out of a dragon when Jack gets back from work.

“I brought pizza,” Jack calls as he takes his shoes off, balancing the three boxes in one hand. They end up leaving his hand fairly quickly as Brock, lured by the smell, takes them into the kitchen. Standing up, Jack pulls off his backpack and follows. “If I didn’t know better, I’d think you were more excited about spicy pepperoni than you are about me getting home.”

“Oh, I am. I definitely am.” Brock grins at Jack over his shoulder, then opens a box, grabs a piece, and takes a big bite before he’s even sitting down.

Rolling his eyes fondly, Jack gets plates for them and pointedly sets one in front of Brock, then grabs a few slices for himself. They won’t get through all three pizzas in one sitting, but at least it’ll provide some quick and easy food for Brock for the next day or so.

Brock gets two thirds of the way through a pizza when he finally slows down to take a breath, leaning back in his chair and wiping his hands clean on a napkin. He rolls his head to the side to look at Jack, and sighs. “One of our neighbors popped by to check in when I was gettin the paper this morning. Asked how my business trip went.”

Jack makes an interested noise as he takes another bite of pizza.

“We need to dial in my cover story before we have to make something up on the fly.”

“What’s in your identity packet?” Jack asks once he’s chewed and swallowed.

“Romanoff’s idea of a joke. I had to keep the name because it’s on the IDs, but like hell am I gonna use the backstory she wrote up for me.”

And, well, it makes sense that she’d troll Brock like that. At least they hadn’t spelled the last name Krueger, otherwise Jack would have to seriously reevaluate Brock’s fixation on fancy knives.

Cleaning off his own hands, Jack shrugs. “Cassie already knows we were in the same unit. Might as well just stick with that. Say you’re in the Army, stationed at McNair. It’s close enough that the commute wouldn’t be crazy.”

Brock nods slowly. “Could work. I’d have to get my hands on some uniforms.”

“Easy enough to do. Should be able to buy almost everything you need directly from the base exchange.”

Lips pursed and arms crossed, Brock frowns thoughtfully at the table. “I’ll have to be seen in uniform during commute hours to help sell it. And I’ll need to keep wearing the nano-mask until all of this goes away.” He gestures to the burns on his face and huffs. “This is why I never did long-term undercover for SHIELD, before.”

“Too complicated?”

“Too annoying.”

Jack snorts and pulls out his pocket knife to get the grease out from under his nails. “And yet, you agreed to be their inside man once you’re back on the active roster.”

“Romanoff’s little spy tech care package means I don’t have to fuck around with makeup and latex anymore. You know how much I hate that shit.”

“You’re just too vain to cover up that pretty face of yours.”

“Shut up, you _like_ my pretty face.” Brock’s grin is toothy but relaxed, and he nudges Jack under the table with his foot. “I’ll call her up tomorrow, see if she can source a DOD card for me.”

Cleaning up after dinner is relatively easy, even if Brock gives him grief about the two plates they have to wash when they could have gotten away without it.

Jack settles down on the couch after that and reaches for his laptop to spend some time working on his latest project for class, but his hands get batted away from it.

“Pay attention to me,” Brock says as he perches on the couch with his knees on either side of Jack’s hips. “I’m _much_ more interesting.”

“You’re also the reason I’m up late the night before my assignments are due, trying to finish them on time.” Jack’s hands find their way to his waist, though, thumbs stroking over the thin line of skin between his belt and shirt.

Brock’s shoulders drop as he sighs, resting his arms on the back of the couch. “It’s a Friday night, sweetheart, you can work on it in the morning.”

Raising an eyebrow, Jack tilts his head. “Is this because I told you no fooling around until your knee and wrist heal up?”

“Maybe.” Brock pulls Jack’s glasses off and folds them, then reaches back to set them on top of the laptop. “Probably. Does it matter?”

“Kinda matters, yeah. If you’re in pain-” He’s not able to finish the sentence before Brock leans in to kiss him. After a moment, Jack pulls away and sighs. “If you’re in pain, you need to take it easy.”

Brock rests his forehead against Jack’s and closes his eyes. “Okay, my wrist’s still a little sore. Knee’s fine, though.”

Jack brushes his thumb gently over the thin red line on Brock’s cheek, all that’s left of the deep cut he came home with. He slides his fingers up to card through Brock’s hair, and Brock presses his head toward the motion like a cat. Chuckling, Jack gently scratches blunt fingernails over that one spot that he knows always itches, and Brock lets out a low groan.

“Go close the curtains, love,” Jack murmurs, then kisses at the corner of Brock’s jaw. “I’ll be here.”

He’s not expecting Brock to strip down _as_ he’s walking over to the window, but he definitely doesn’t mind the view.

  
  


Brock does actually let him finish his homework the next day, but as soon as Jack closes his laptop and sets it aside, Brock’s feet end up in his lap instead.

“It’s a good thing no one at SHIELD ever saw you like this,” Jack says, amused, as he starts kneading his fingers into the soles of Brock’s feet. “Your badass reputation would have evaporated overnight.”

“You’re one to talk. Your resting bitch face sent the baby agents diving for cover, but god forbid they find out you sing in the shower.” A walrus-like thing flops to the ground after Brock’s _Skyrim_ character stabs it with a knife. Brock twitches reflexively and then relaxes when Jack gets a knot of tension to release.

“How d’you think you got a team so well trained that you never even had to give orders half the time?”

Brock glances up at Jack and smiles briefly before looking back at the TV. “Allegiances aside, those were capable soldiers we had.”

“Do you miss them?”

“Pff. Hell no.” Brock swears under his breath and mashes buttons on the game controller. “I can respect their abilities and value the work they did for me while still being thankful those bastards are dead.”

“We’re two of ‘those bastards,’ you know.” Mercer’s hand around Jack’s throat and the harsh hiss of _traitor_ rise up in his mind, unbidden. “Sometimes I wonder who betrayed who.”

Pausing his game, Brock sets the controller on the coffee table and sits up. “You were SHIELD’s from the start, until Pierce had them fuck up your head with Faustus. I was HYDRA’s before they embedded me in SHIELD, though. So I guess it went both ways.”

“Hm. Next thing you know, you’ll be wearing an Avengers emblem on your shoulder.”

Brock grimaces. “No way. I’m not one of the good guys.”

“You’re fighting for the good guys.”

“I’m fighting against the bad guys. There’s a difference.”

Smirking, Jack pokes Brock’s nose. “Tomayto, tomahto. Brock Rumlow, you’re officially a good guy.”

“Ugh, stoppit.” Brock flops back down on the couch with his hands on his stomach. “At least we took out Strucker’s base. That should mean mopping up the rest of HYDRA’s straightforward from here on out.”

  
  


They get the call right as they’re heading to bed that night.

JARVIS is dead. Ultron is loose, and the Avengers are gearing up to take the fight to him.

Brock spends an hour on the punching bag in the garage, then stalks into the Batcave to help Hill coordinate operations from the ground.

He leaves the door open, just enough that Jack can hear him talking with everyone else over the radio. Jack stays up with him, sitting on the couch trying to refactor his program into a different language.

At around 2 AM, Brock goes silent mid-sentence.

Then, quietly, Jack hears him swear in Italian. He’s on his feet and jogging toward the Batcave as soon as he can safely put his laptop down.

When he pokes his head in, Brock’s staring wide-eyed at one of the monitors on his workstation, hand over his mouth, as the skeleton of a skyscraper under construction crumples inward.

Jack brings in a fresh pack of ice for the wrist that Brock is ignoring, a protein bar, and an energy drink. Then, he picks up the spare headset and patches in to help coordinate relief efforts.

  
  


He calls in sick to work and class the entire following week. It’s less of an adjustment than he wants it to be, putting on SHIELD fatigues while he’s on video calls.

  
  


Jack’s phone rings several times each day. Cassie, then Kevin. Ryan even calls him a few times. He doesn’t answer. He’s too busy making officers in the Sokovian military blink first.

  
  


“I can’t find him,” Jack says, eyes closed, head bowed. “I didn’t interact with Dr. Banner enough to have a read on his pulse. I’m sorry.”


	4. Chapter 4

Brock finally falls asleep at his workstation on Friday around noon.

 _“You two get some rest,”_ Hill tells Jack. _“Take time to recover and check in once you’re back on your feet.”_

Nodding, Jack nudges Brock awake, and manages to get him to the couch before Brock’s legs give out.

With how his hands are shaking from fatigue, Jack’s barely able to tear the wrapper for a tea bag. He manages to get it open, then drops the sachet into his mug and leans heavily on the kitchen counter. His headset is still active on the team channel, and he’s half-listening with a muted microphone as Fury’s team coordinates relocation of the evacuated Sokovians.

He almost doesn’t notice when the doorbell rings. After attempting to rub some of the fatigue out of his eyes, he adjusts his glasses and heads for the door. When he rounds the corner into the entryway, there’s three silhouettes visible against the frosted glass. Jack takes a breath and holds it for a moment, throws the latch, then opens the door.

“Whoa,” Cassie says, and takes half a step back straight into Kevin. Ryan looks up from his phone, then his eyes go wide.

It takes Jack a moment to realize that he’s still wearing a SHIELD uniform and his headset. And he’s noticeably armed.

Closing his eyes, Jack hangs his head a moment, then just steps to the side to let them in. The click of the door closing is eerily loud, and all three kids just awkwardly stand there in the entryway, staring at him.

Cassie’s the one that breaks the silence. “So… I’m guessing this has something to do with what’s been on the news.”

Jack nods.

“And your uniform says ‘Rollins’ on it.”

He nods again. Kevin looks like he’s going to be sick.

“You missed the midterm.”

“I know.” It comes out raspy and hoarse; he’s spent the past four days yelling at various people in Serbian.

Cassie bites her lip, then looks around the corner into the house. “Is Fred okay?”

“Been a long week.” The kettle beeps, startling all three of the kids. Jack takes a breath, then pushes off the wall to head back into the kitchen once Ryan scoots out of his way. The steam from the kettle fogs up his glasses briefly as he fills his mug.

“Jack?” Brock’s voice is sleep-muddled and fuzzy as he sits up on the couch. His hair is a fluffy mess with a dent in it from his headset, there’s creases through the burn scars from the couch pillow, and his eyes are even more bloodshot than usual. “Wha’s goin-”

He’s interrupted by a high-pitched, brief shriek, and it takes Jack half a second to realize it came from Kevin.

Brock stares at the kids, frozen in place.

The kids stare at Brock.

Jack leans forward to gently thunk his forehead against the cabinet in front of him and sighs.

“Rollins,” Brock says, his voice eerily calm. “Why do we have three millennial-sized holes in OPSEC standing in our house?”

Turning, Jack leans against the counter with his mug in one hand; he reaches up and turns off his headset, then wraps his other hand around his tea. “I let them in.”

“What do you- are you _nuts?”_ Lurching to his feet, Brock drags his hands through his hair. “We have no idea whether-”

Kevin reaches out and puts a hand on the wall, then his skin turns the same color as the fucking wall.

Tea sloshes over Jack’s hand as he startles, and he croaks out a curse as he sets his mug down quickly and gets cold water running over his hand.

Kevin makes an unhappy noise. “Sorry…” As soon as he takes his hand off the wall, his skin’s back to its normal color. “I just… you’re… not the only ones that are hiding.”

Pinching the bridge of his nose, Brock takes a breath. “Cassie? Ryan? Anything else we need to know?”

“I’m hyperflexible,” Cassie says with a wince.

Ryan snaps his fingers and the ceiling lights turn off.

After several long seconds, Brock puts his hands on his hips and shakes his head helplessly. “Of all the college students you could have adopted, Jack, you _had_ to pick the mutants.”

“What can I say?” Jack rasps, his lips pulling into a smirk. “I tend to pick up strays.”

Brock scoffs. “Clearly.” With a quick twist, he flops back down onto the couch. “Don’t wake me up unless it’s bleeding, on fire, or Ultron.”

Tilting his head, Ryan opens his mouth a few times. “Did he just…”

“Fall asleep again? Yeah.” Jack refills his mug and drops in a second tea bag for good measure. “He can sleep through gunfire if he wants to.”

“I don’t want to know how you know that,” Kevin mumbles, shaking his head. He walks over to the fridge, opens it, and starts digging around.

“Hey, what-”

“Sit down, we’re cooking for you.”

Jack’s about to protest when Cassie nudges him toward the kitchen table. “When was the last time you two ate?” she asks. “And don’t say you had a protein bar an hour ago, I mean a _real_ meal.”

He starts to tell her, then realizes he can’t remember.

“Thought so.” With a quick pat on Jack’s shoulder, Cassie catches the fridge door as it swings closed behind Kevin, and starts pulling out more ingredients.

Jack pulls his headset off, drops it on the table, and can’t completely hide the small smile on his face.

  
  


Brock’s finally deployed on his first undercover mission, which leaves Jack alone to deal with the block party flyer taped to his front door a week before Memorial Day. Cassie and Kevin are up at her parents’ cabin for the weekend, Ryan went back home, and Sam is with his family up in Harlem.

Not that Jack minds quiet holidays, but he’s gotten a little used to having some people around him.

He doesn’t even need to call Sam to hear him saying something about making friends and meeting people, though. A quick Google search for _easy potluck recipes_ nets him a few options, and he RSVPs for a dessert before sitting down with dinner and homework.

  
  


By the time the block party rolls around, Jack’s just about out of his mind. Brock’s on a deep cover assignment, so there’s no contact besides a quick _alive <3 _ every night from a different spoofed phone number each time. He appreciates it, he really does, even if he’s starting to become more aware of that tether to Brock’s pulse that’s hooked in deep behind his sternum, but it’s just not the same as a phone call.

The pie he pulls out of the oven is pretty damn attractive if he may say so himself, and he’s setting it down on the counter to cool when someone knocks on the door. Figuring it’s probably one of the neighbors coming by to check on him or tell him something, Jack shimmies his hands out of the oven mitts and heads over.

He’s not expecting to see Romanoff in a dark brown wig and a sundress, carrying a fruit salad.

Jack briefly considers just closing the door in her face, but he sighs and steps to the side to let her in.

“Sorry I’m late,” she says with a smile that’s just a little too wide. “Traffic was hell.”

He closes the door behind her and puts his hands on his hips. “Shoes off at the door. Why’re you here?”

“Can’t I keep a friend company when his bae is out of town?” Somehow Jack ends up holding her fruit salad as she undoes the straps on her sandals.

“I’d hardly call us friends.”

“I’m hurt, Jack. Really hurt.” The salad bowl leaves his hands again and ends up on the counter next to the pie. “Oh, look, you can do things other than stab people in the back.”

Leaning against the wall, Jack crosses his arms. “If Brock’s in danger-”

“I wouldn’t be here in a sundress, I’d be landing a Quinjet in your front yard and handing you a rifle. Relax.”

Jack raises an eyebrow and looks at her over his glasses. “There’s going to be kids there.”

“I love kids. I’m _great_ with kids.”

Honestly, it’s probably not worth the stress or the argument. Jack remembers enough about Romanoff to know that she almost always gets her way. “So, who are you, then? Because saying you’re my sister is a bit of a low blow.”

“Figured I’d go for sister-in-law, actually.” Romanoff hops up off the counter and ignores Jack’s exasperated look. “Call me Stacey.”

“Am I going to have to run interference with Brock if he finds out?”

Romanoff makes an _ehhhh_ noise and wags her hand back and forth. “Probably not.”

“Hm. Your funeral.” And with that, he walks into the living room and sits down with his laptop to finish writing an algorithm until it’s time to be sociable.

  
  


He shouldn’t be surprised, but Romanoff is delightfully charming and wins over all of his neighbors in minutes. Jack, having established a reputation as being the quiet one, sits off to the side with the teenagers as they doodle their favorite anime characters in sketchbooks of varying quality. It’s not long before he’s giving informal Japanese lessons and coaching them on pronunciation.

The evening’s winding down and Jack’s almost done with his second root beer when Romanoff wanders back over and claims one of the empty chairs next to him.

“Had your fill of civilians?” Jack asks, then gives her a pleasantly surprised look when she hands him one of the two dessert sampler plates she’s carrying.

“You have good people around you. Rumlow picked the right neighborhood.”

“And you-” Jack pulls the fork out of a small slice of cake. “-didn’t answer my question.”

She’s quiet for a moment, munching on a cookie, then shrugs. “It’s nice to remind myself what I spend so much time and energy protecting.”

“You don’t have to listen to the Petersons getting their rocks off at 0400.” Jack nods subtly to the elderly couple.

Romanoff lets out an inelegant snort, then promptly coughs to dislodge a piece of cookie she inhaled.

“Brock wanted to buy them Life Alert, but I had to remind him how that’s a little outside normal social behavior.”

“His entire _everything_ is a little outside normal social behavior.”

“Pot, kettle.”

The slap on his shoulder is playful, nowhere near hard enough to actually hurt, and when Jack looks over, Romanoff has one of those small, prim smiles that means she’s actually amused. “Beauty and the Beast, huh?”

“Pandering to my vanity already.”

“You know, you could fly up to the Avengers facility and have Cho fix up that canyon on your chin-”

“Thanks. Thanks for that.”

“-but I hear the chicks really dig a guy with scars.”

Jack rolls his head to the side to look at her. “You’re just jealous ‘cause that mission in Riga was aborted before we had to resort to drastic measures to maintain our cover.”

“Was that before or after you married your commanding officer?” Romanoff picks up a strawberry. “So your memory really is coming back.”

“Bits and pieces, here and there. My last MRI showed some good progress.”

She finishes off a few more pieces of fruit, and one of the preteens runs by with a squirt gun before she says anything else. “I am actually sorry about the brain injury, you know.”

Turning in his chair a bit so he can face her better, Jack sets his plate on his leg and gives her his full attention.

“You’re doing really well with everything you’ve built since you were released,” she continues, looking at her food rather than at him. “And, from what I can tell, you actually seem pretty happy with it all, too.”

Jack nods.

“But I’m sorry for giving you a life-changing, career-ending injury. And I’m sorry for the symptoms you’re still dealing with.”

Mulling this over for a bit, Jack nods slowly. “I hope you’re not interested in becoming friends, because-”

“God, no. _Hell_ no.”

“-that’s going to take more than an apology you were encouraged to make by the therapist you won’t admit you’re seeing.”

The eye roll he gets is definitely worth needling her, but Jack lets it go after that. He picks up his dessert plate again and starts whittling away at the cake.

Out of the blue, several minutes later, Romanoff surprises him again with, “Thank you.”

Jack makes a confused noise and looks at her.

She gives him a hesitant smile, not quite looking at him. “It’s nice to pretend to be normal, sometimes.”

“Well, you pretend enough, and sooner or later it becomes less like pretending.”

“Yeah… not people like me. Rumlow and I are more alike than I usually admit.”

“Hm.” Jack smiles as he starts on his pie. “Maybe you really _should_ be siblings. God knows you two fight like ‘em.”

That night, Jack watches the Black Widow giggle until she accidentally gets cake up her nose.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Many, many thanks to Andie for letting me borrow their character Gabriel D’Ambrosio for this chapter.

The end of the school year brings with it warmer weather, plans for the three kids to go on a road trip, and grades that are better than Jack expected them to be.

Brock insists on taking him out somewhere nice for dinner the day his transcript is updated, and once they get home, he backs Jack into the bedroom and pushes him toward the bed insistently.

Not that Jack’s in much of a rush to get up the next morning, all things considered. He’s not sure his legs remember how to work properly. At least Brock changed the sheets before they actually went to sleep.

It’s a lazy morning, and they greet it with equally languid movements, bodies still warm and supple from the night before. The sun’s starting to shine in through the bedroom window by the time Jack finally feels like he wants to get out of the warm cocoon of happy hormones that is their bed.

Brock bats a hand at him blindly and grumbles into the pillow when Jack extracts himself to go to the bathroom.

“I’ll be right back,” Jack promises, then bends over to place a kiss just above the base of Brock’s spine.

“Mm. You’d better be.”

The doorbell rings as Jack’s relieving himself, and his shoulders slump as he sighs. After washing his hands, he heads for the dresser to grab some sweatpants, but Brock groans in protest.

“Leave it, it’s probably the mailman. He’ll-” He’s interrupted by another chime. “Sonuva _bitch.”_

Jack closes his eyes and pokes around mentally; he can tell someone’s at the door, but they don’t feel familiar. When he senses the cluster of energy turn away and start back down the front steps, he shrugs. “Whoever it is, they aren’t sticking around.”

Crawling back onto the bed, Jack lays himself out on top of Brock, smiling down at him. Brock’s eyes crinkle as he yawns and stretches, arms above his head, and Jack takes advantage of that to lace their fingers together and gently pin him in place.

“Did you pop a Viagra or something?” Brock grumbles, but he tilts his head to the side and up to allow Jack better access to his neck.

“What, you can’t keep up in your old age?”

A low growl is all the warning Jack gets before he’s suddenly on his back with Brock on all fours above him. Brock gives him a toothy grin, then leans down to nip at Jack’s nose. “Remind me which one of us has an enhanced metaboli-”

Dull tapping on the window startles them both badly enough that Jack accidentally slams his knee into Brock’s balls. Brock crumples to the bed, groaning, and Jack swears a few times before finally looking up to see what just happened.

A lanky man with curly black hair and a few days’ stubble is watching them from outside with a bemused expression. “I can come back,” he says, muffled through the glass. “Doesn’t seem like now’s a good time.”

“Fuck _off,_ Doc,” Brock grits out loud enough to be heard outside.

“Nah, you two seem to have that covered.” The man gives Jack a bit of an awkward half-wave before looking away. “I’ll, uh, go stop by the diner a few blocks away, grab some breakfast. Give me a call when you’re… presentable.” Without waiting for a response, he turns and walks out of view.

  
  


It’s less awkward than it could be, when the stranger comes back to the house after Brock calls him. 

“Sorry about that,” Jack says, scratching the back of his neck as he lets the guy in. “We weren’t expecting company.”

The man waves it off, glances down at the shoe rack near the door, and bends down to take his own shoes off. “Sorry for not calling ahead. HQ has a bug up its ass about how Rumlow doesn’t have a recent physical on file.”

“They can stick me full of needles and run me on a treadmill when I’m dead!” Brock growls from the kitchen.

“Yeah, well…” With a smirk, the man walks past Jack and into the house. “They also assigned me to you as your partner for missions.”

Brock turns to look at the stranger, eyes narrowed. “What.”

“I’m the only idiot still willing to work with you, after they found out you’re the one that launched the helicarriers. Sit down, shirt off, I need to listen to your lungs.”

Leaning against the wall at the end of the entryway, Jack watches this happen with mild amusement as the SHIELD doctor bullies Brock into submission. “Partner, huh? Did they clear you for combat?”

The doctor’s shoulders stiffen for a moment, then he nods. “I’m one of the few medics who passed STRIKE qualifications.”

“And the only medic you never threatened to kill whenever you were at sick call,” Brock informs Jack, gritting his teeth when the doctor pushes his head to the side to look at the burn scars on his neck.

“I’m also the only medic willing to hit back,” the doctor mutters. “Seriously, dealing with you two enhanced assholes is a full time job and it should damn well come with hazard pay.”

Jack is… really not sure how to react to that. Not only did he apparently know this guy Before, but the doctor also knows Jack’s a mutant. And he’s manhandling Brock in a way that would get most people eviscerated.

_-Took you to the Retreat with D’Ambrosio as a medic-_

Rubbing at his temples, Jack sighs when he runs face first into one of the increasingly rare walls in his head. “I’m sorry,” he mumbles. “I… don’t…”

“It’s fine.” D’Ambrosio’s voice is tight as he shines a light back and forth across Brock’s eyes. “I testified at your trial. I know what happened.”

Jack nods, swallows, then walks into the living room. He sits sideways on the couch, laptop resting on his thighs, then tries to focus on one of the programming projects he started last week for fun. It’s hard to keep the lines of code from blurring together, though, as Brock and the doctor murmur quietly back and forth.

D’Ambrosio’s doing a good job of hiding it, keeping the heartbroken disappointment from leaking out into the world around him much better than Jack expects. But he still feels the doctor’s eyes on him every few minutes, looking over, cataloging the ways Jack’s changed since he left active duty at SHIELD.

Jack usually loops his hair into a small bun at the nape of his neck, now, and he knows his glasses soften the lines of his face to begin with. It still hits him every so often how little he resembles the man in his personnel file; there’s nothing left of the angular efficiency and flat professionalism. And while he’s still fit, wiry and strong, the muscle mass he’d maintained so carefully through his years in STRIKE had melted away within months.

“Looks like he did back in the Academy,” Jack hears Brock say, quietly enough that he just barely catches the words.

D’Ambrosio hums in agreement. “Okay, I need to check the burns on your legs, now. And yeah, although his hair was still shorter back then.”

“Least he ain’t dyin’ it black anymore.”

It takes some effort to avoid shooting Brock a skeptical look, but Jack manages.

Chuckling, D’Ambrosio crouches down out of Jack’s field of view. “I still have a box somewhere of old Polaroids and four-by-six Costco prints from Ops Acad. Want me to dig it up?”

Jack doesn’t wait to hear Brock’s response before he closes his laptop with a snap, gets up, and walks outside to the backyard.

He’s not even sure why he’s so pissy all of a sudden, but it’s bubbling under his skin and flickering through his tattoos in tiny little spurts of flame. Pacing around the small vegetable garden just starting to sprout doesn’t help him calm down any, and he resorts to torching some weeds just to (literally) burn off the excess energy.

“Well, that’s one way to do it.”

It’s a small miracle that he doesn’t spin around reflexively and roast the doctor alive; Jack hadn’t even heard him walk up. Catching himself and closing his eyes, Jack takes a deep breath, then looks back at the seedlings and pokes at another dandelion until it withers away. “It’s cathartic.”

Walking around to the other side of the planter bed, D’Ambrosio squats and gives Jack an unimpressed look. “Sometimes you make me wonder which one of the two of you is the clinical psychopath.”

“We’re all somewhere on that spectrum, in our line of work.” A cluster of mustard grass smokes a little as it dies. “You should be concerned when someone _isn’t.”_

D’Ambrosio snorts. “Truer words. Listen, I’m sorry about-”

“It’s fine.”

“It’s not, Jack.”

“It has to be fine, okay?” Dragging off his glasses, Jack presses his thumb and knuckle into his eyes. “It has to be fine, or else I’d go fuckin’ crazy from the fact that I can’t even remember my mom’s name. It ain’t in my goddamn file because half of it’s fucking _redacted._ I don’t know who you are beyond an offhand comment Brock made a few months ago. I didn’t even recognize my own _sister_ and Jesus fucking Christ-”

D’Ambrosio hops awkwardly over the seedlings and plants his knees in the grass next to Jack, then pulls him into a hug. The intense familiarity of it, the sudden and overwhelming sense of _right_ that floods through him as soon as their skin makes contact, it’s enough to leave Jack breathless. Even if his brain doesn’t remember the man, his body does.

Closing his eyes, Jack leans into him and struggles to pull in a breath. 

“Aislynn,” D’Ambrosio tells him, soft and gentle. “Your mom’s name was Aislynn. And your dad was Eoin. And you grew up on a ranch in Bumfuck Nowhere, Georgia, with more cows and horses than people. You went to college studying architecture at Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo, and then you joined SHIELD before you even graduated.”

A warm hand slides up and down Jack’s back comfortingly, and he tries to keep breathing, steady and slow.

“I showed up at the Ops Academy for my first day with two duffel bags and a backpack, managed to get lost three times on the way to my dorm room, and when I got there, I saw this weedy, scrawny Irish kid already asleep on the other bed. Fast forward a month, and my roommate turned into the biggest pain in my ass that I’d ever dealt with.”

With a quick huff of laughter, D’Ambrosio shifts around so he can hug Jack a little better. “Fast forward another six months, and, uh.” He clears his throat, and Jack can feel the embarrassment warming D’Ambrosio’s skin. “Well, you weren’t exactly a _pain_ in my ass at that point.”

_-opening up a care package from LOUISE D’AMBROSIO, there’s no note inside, just a… oh. Jack opens and closes his mouth, genuinely not sure what to say. Instead, he reaches in and lifts out what he can only describe as a cactus-shaped dildo-_

_-home late and sore from a day of getting his ass kicked by the drill instructors, and the smell of bitter black espresso hits him half a second before the sharp tang of alcohol. A half-empty cup of coffee sits forgotten next to an organic chemistry textbook, shot glass half-submerged-_

_-music is loud and thrums through every fiber of Jack’s being as the band onstage plays. He turns to his right and grins at Gabe, who looks both out of place in a borrowed too-large concert shirt and like he’s having the time of his life. Jack grabs at his shoulders and roughly pulls him into a kiss-_

_-one of the med students is trying to ride the statue of Hippocrates like a mechanical bull and like hell does Jack want to get pulled up in front of the director for not doing something, but hands pull at his arm and he turns to see-_

_-‘anatomy study’ does in fact turn out to be the euphemism Jack thinks it is but holy shit he’s not complaining-_

Jack shudders as that piece of the wall around his memories comes crumbling down, flooding him with three more years of his life. His hand is curled into Gabe’s shirt, tight enough to pull the fabric into creases, and his breath is hissing through his teeth as he tries and fails to control it.

Another hand brushes against his shoulder, then slides to the back of his neck: Brock, grounding him with the gentle pressure. It takes a few minutes, but Jack’s lungs finally stop fighting him and he’s able to breathe steadily again.

“How much did you remember, sweetheart?” Brock asks as he works Jack’s hair loose and starts carding his fingers through it.

Jack takes one breath, then another, and relaxes into the touch. “Enough to know that there’s no way in hell this isn’t unbearably awkward for you, Gabe.”

Laughing, Gabe pats him on the back. “Trust me, I’ve learned to deal with it by now.”

“Still.”

They sit there for a few more minutes, waiting for Jack to remember which direction down is, then Brock hauls them both to their feet, herds them inside, and insists on cooking lunch.

  
  


Two weeks later, Gabe lets himself into the house minutes before Brock’s phone goes off with a mission alert.

“Be safe,” Jack says, looking first into brown, hard eyes, then younger gray ones. “Be _safe._ And if you can’t be safe-”

“Be deadly,” Gabe finishes for him, and Brock steps up to Jack for a kiss.

He gets the familiar _I love you_ hand sign flashed over Brock’s shoulder as they walk toward the waiting unmarked black SUV. Halfway down the driveway, Brock slings an arm companionably around Gabe’s neck, and Gabe’s arms flail a bit as he’s pulled off balance.

Jack closes the door after the SUV pulls away with Brock riding shotgun and Gabe driving. He closes his eyes, slows his breathing, then reaches out to brush against that tether tying him to Brock.

He knows he’s not imagining it when there’s a subtle pulse of fierce, burning affection that rolls his way through the connection between them.


	6. Chapter 6

For as hot as it is in DC in August, Jack’s dreading getting off the plane in Atlanta. He’s also still not entirely sure how Brock talked him into this, but he wasn’t able to do a lot of arguing after his boss said she’d already approved his vacation. So, Jack sits in the window seat watching the coastline slowly drift by, with his legs pretzeled up and Brock snoring quietly on his shoulder.

They’re only planning to stay a few days. Jack’s not sure he can handle much more, even if it goes well.

He feels like his nerves are trying to vibrate out of his body as they disembark, each carrying a sturdy backpack filled with everything they might need short of materiel for invading a sovereign nation. Brock looks up at him, eyebrows furrowed with concern, and brushes his hand against Jack’s but doesn’t hold it. Not here, not where there’s so many people that might react poorly to a gay couple.

“Do they know we’re coming?” Jack asks as they drop their backpacks into the back seat of a rental car. Brock doesn’t answer as he ducks in and starts the engine.

It’s roughly an hour’s drive due east from the airport, and by the time they turn off the highway onto a dirt road, Jack’s hands are sweating and he feels a little sick.

Ten more minutes go by while Jack fidgets with the abandoned pen that was in the glovebox. The dirt road seems to go on forever. Cows and crops hem them in on either side for as far as the eye can see. At one point, Jack turns to look out the side window and sees someone off in the distance riding a leggy chestnut horse, silhouetted against the horizon.

He knows from the way Brock keeps glancing at him that he’s trying not to ask if anything seems familiar.

The house they pull up to is gargantuan by DC standards, with a huge paved circular driveway, two spacious stories, a narrow veranda at the front, and a large covered patio protruding off the back. A few hundred feet away looms a similarly sized barn, upper doors open so a fan can extract the hot air pooling in the peak of the roof.

A grizzled old man in a rocking chair rolls slowly back and forth, one boot up on the railing of the veranda. He leans back and raps his knuckles against the side of the house as Brock parks the car, and the front door opens a moment later.

Three people come out: a woman with dark hair and a belly boasting a child on its way, a thin man with strawberry blond hair and a nervous smile, and-

Kayla.

Jack’s heart stutters for a moment as he sees his sister for the first time since the trial.

The parking brake ratchets as Brock tugs it up, then he nudges Jack in the shoulder. “Go on.”

Kayla’s reddish-brown hair is pulled back in a loose ponytail that trails down the shoulder of her denim shirt. Her eyes, piercingly green even from this distance, watch Jack carefully as he fumbles with the latch on the car door.

He eventually gets it open, takes a quick breath to brace himself, and stands up into the oppressively humid Georgia heat.

Boots thump on the steps on the veranda, and Jack only just barely looks up before hands grab the front of his shirt and pin him to the rear door of the car.

“I am _torn,_ Jackie Rollins,” Kayla growls, and it feels like the ground is tilting out from under Jack as he looks at her face and sees the same nose, the same high forehead, the same thin jaw he sees in the mirror. “I am _torn_ between huggin’ you until you faint, or punchin’ you in the goddamn face for the same reason.”

She glances over his shoulder and one of her eyebrows quirks up. “Hey, Brock. Nice to see you again. Don’t think this lets you off the hook.”

“No, ma’am.”

Jack’s still staring at who he’s beginning to realize is his twin sister. “Hi,” he says weakly, and that’s when Kayla decides to deck him.

  
  


Brock sighs, short and exasperated, as he gently cleans the scrape on Jack’s cheek from where he took a sudden detour to the driveway pavement. “I didn’t think it was gonna go there,” he murmurs, dabbing neosporin on one of the abrasions. “Then again, she’s always been the pissier one of the two of you.”

Closing his eyes, Jack tries not to flinch away from the sharp stinging on his cheek. Something hard and heavy gets placed on the table next to him, and he looks up to see the dark-haired woman smiling at him awkwardly.

“Tea.” She pats his arm. “Jimmy’s talking to Kayla, getting her calmed down.”

“It’s fine, I probably deserve it.”

“On what account?”

“Marge-” Brock starts, but she cuts him off with a sharp raise of her hand.

“You’re family. _Both_ of you boys are. Decisions and mistakes be damned, we stand by our own.”

Jack swallows thickly and wraps his hands around the mug. “You saw the trial?”

“Oh, honey.” Marge’s face does something odd and it takes Jack a moment to realize she’s sad. “We were there.”

  
  


Jack finds Kayla on the back patio that evening, smoking a cigarette and swirling a glass of scotch. He scuffs his feet as he approaches to give her some warning, waiting a few paces away in case she wants to be alone.

“Free country,” she tells him gruffly, and gestures to the empty half of the loveseat with her glass.

Sitting, Jack pulls his legs up and wraps his arms around them. “Almost wasn’t.”

“You really wanna do this right now, bub?”

“Well, Brock has the car keys and the boarding passes, and I don’t fancy walking all the way back to Atlanta. So, it’s not like I have anything better to do than get my dick chewed off.”

Kayla snorts inelegantly and the corner of her mouth pulls up in a smirk. “Nope, that’s definitely Brock’s job. Also, gross.”

The cicadas hum just enough that Jack’s tinnitus doesn’t start driving him crazy as the minutes stretch between them. Finally, he rests his chin on his arms, not-quite-watching the sun dip lower in the sky. “I’m sorry.”

“For?”

He sighs and rolls his eyes slightly; for as little as he remembers of her, they share so many mannerisms. “Bending over and taking it up the ass from the secret Nazi cult. Not calling you after I got released. And still not calling you even after I started remembering.”

“You were brainwashed, Jackie.” Kayla stubs out her cigarette and picks up the pack next to the ashtray, considers, then sets it back down. “Rogers made that pretty damn clear. He even apologized to us that it happened, like he could have done anything while he was frozen in the Arctic.”

Jack feels a twitch of a smile form on his face, but it disappears just as quickly. “I signed on for STRIKE before they did that to me. It’s not like I didn’t know the risks of my job.”

“Why’d HYDRA want you so bad?” she asks, turning to him and frowning. “What could they _possibly_ have offered you to make you sign yourself away like that?”

In answer, Jack just lifts his left hand up, and his wedding ring catches the amber light of the setting sun.

Kayla purses her lips, then sighs and shakes her head, turning back to look toward the horizon. “You’re lucky he loves you as much as he does.”

“I know.”

One of the barn cats pounces in the bushes and trots out a moment later with a vole between its jaws.

“He still ain’t said it?”

“Not in as many words. But he doesn’t have to.”

Kayla gives him a skeptical look, then just shakes her head. “I guess if it works for you…” She tosses the rest of her scotch down, then sets the empty tumbler next to the ashtray. “Just tell me they never found out what you are. Tell me they never _used_ you.”

“They didn’t, and I’m inclined to trust the people who told me that. I don’t know what strings Brock pulled to keep me off SHIELD’s Index, and I’m really not sure I should ask. But-”

“Good. I just-” She closes her eyes and exhales, then adds more quietly. “Good.”

After another breath, Kayla unbuttons the cuff on her sleeve and rolls it up as if she’s preparing to hit someone. Jack recognizes the nervous bravado easily, another quirk shared between them. He looks closer at her hands and blinks in surprise when she shows him a set of markings identical to his own.

“Same DNA,” Kayla murmurs, and with a quick, unsteady movement, reaches over to clasp her hand around Jack’s. Her long fingers, callused from decades of ranch work, match his better than he expects. “Same DNA, just…”

Jack starts to say, “Better living through chemistry,” but he chokes on the last word and his eyes sting. He turns his hand to lace their fingers together and the deep, cellular-level _knowing_ that rockets through his body makes him dizzy. Brock may be his husband, his partner, the person he shares his life with, but Kayla, she’s his other _half._

It feels like a lightning storm in Jack’s brain as Kayla reaches over and drags him into her arms. When she curls an arm around his head and starts rocking them back and forth gently, Jack realizes he’s crying. Warmth floods through his skin, and their tattoos start shimmering with a rich golden yellow, pulsing in time with each other.

It’s painful in the best way as the walls left in Jack’s head start to crumble, the holes are filled in, and everything comes back in a dizzying, whitewater crush of memories. He clutches desperately at Kayla’s shoulder, looking for some sort of anchor, and she holds him tighter as both of them threaten to shake apart.

When Jack resurfaces and the torrent is slowed to a trickle, it’s past dusk and fireflies are floating lazily over the fields behind the house. Kayla pushes on his knees to get him to put his feet back on the patio deck, then pulls her own feet up into his lap and curls up under Jack’s arm.

He’s pretty sure both of them are a mess at this point; his nose is stuffed up and his eyes just ache, and at some point his glasses ended up on the end table next to Kayla’s ashtray. Based on the way she’s sniffing, she’s not doing any better.

Her hand thumps against his chest over his heart, then her fingers curl into the fabric of his shirt. “I’m still mad at you, you bastard.”

“Yknow,” Jack murmurs as he rests his head on top of hers, “I’m twelve minutes older than you.”

“Suck my dick, cowboy.”

“That’s incest. And you don’t have one anymore.”

“Thank the Flying Spaghetti Monster for that.”

Jack closes his eyes and smiles.

Behind them, Brock looks a them with a soft, fond warmth in his eyes, then draws the curtains shut and pads upstairs.


	7. Epilogue

“Be safe,” Brock whispers, forehead pressed to Jack’s, hands on either side of Jack’s neck.

Another triangular dropship slams into the earth just outside the dome surrounding Birnin Zana, and the blinding animal rage of the aliens is already starting to make Jack’s skin crawl.

Closing his eyes, Jack tilts his head and kisses Brock deeply. Just in case it’s the last one they ever get. He straightens the black collar of Brock’s shirt under his Crossbones armor, touches his fingertips to the circled A emblazoned on the corner of the chestplate, and tries to smile. “Be deadly.”

  
  


Jack groans as he peels himself off the floor of Shuri’s lab. The sound of shattering glass has him stagger over to the open window frame, and he watches Vision tumble downward with the black-robed intruder.

Pressing a finger to his earbud, Jack takes a few breaths. “The lab has been breached. Repeat, the lab has been breached. They have Vision.”

He leans against the frame of the window and presses his hand against his aching ribs. Chances are at least one of them is cracked. Desperately, he reaches out for Brock’s pulse.

The tether leads him to a small patch of forest; the snapping of twigs and rush of air tell Jack that Brock is running toward-

Pain lances through his head as Vision dies and Jack gasps raggedly, sliding a few inches down the window frame.

“Agent Rollins?” A small hand touches his arm, gentle and careful, steadier than his own.

Jack looks up at Shuri. She’s too calm, she has too much steel in her eyes for one so young. He takes a breath, stands up straighter, and tells her, “I need a rifle.”

  
  


A golden hand - no, a _gauntlet_ \- rises up in the narrow view of Jack’s scope. Fingers overlap, readying for movement.

Jack exhales. Holds.

Between one heartbeat and the next, he fires.

  
  


Brock rolls to his feet just as he sees Thor recoil in surprise and Thanos’ body crumple to the earth. The fingers of the gauntlet splay limply apart on the dense, dusty soil.

Five seconds later, the sharp double-crack of a rifle pierces the forest around them, followed by the crackling roar of the bullet’s shock wave.

“What…” Thor stares at the misshapen lump of purple on the ground between Thanos’ shoulders. “What just happened?”

Barnes slowly stands and scoops up his rifle. “A supersonic armor-piercing .50-cal just happened. Who’s the shoo-”

 _“Y’all were taking too long,”_ Jack says over the radio, and Brock knows he’s not the only one that hears how breathless Jack is, how strained his voice sounds. _“Sometimes you have to stop being safe and just fucking be deadly, okay?”_

Brock’s not sure if he’s laughing, crying, or both, but it’s some sort of hysterical noise pouring out of him and T’Challa is looking at him like he’s grown a second head.

  
  


“Piss off, Nick,” Jack says as he makes one last adjustment to Barker, then pats the robot and sends it on its way. “We’re retired.”

Brock lets out an audible snore from where he’s ‘napping’ in the corner at Jack’s second desk, Campus Security baseball cap pulled low over his face.

“And if another Thanos shows up?” Fury asks, one eyebrow raised.

“Then you go find my sister, hand her a bottle of Teeling, and point her at the sorry fucker that decided to shit on our planet.”

Thankfully, it’s not until after Fury leaves that Brock stops stifling his giggles.

When Brock’s lunch break ends, he walks up and wraps his arms around Jack’s waist from behind and brushes a kiss over the nape of Jack’s neck. “Don’t forget about Cassie’s thing tonight, by the way. I got her gift wrapped for you, it’s on the kitchen counter.”

Jack twists around so he can push Brock’s hat back and kiss him properly, then smiles. “Have fun at Kevin’s stag party, if I don’t see you before then. Love you.”

With a slight smile and a bit of a blush that finally shows on mostly-smooth skin, Brock says, “Love you too.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Glowing tattoos and other inspiration
> 
>   * <https://ih1.redbubble.net/image.339261164.1289/flat,750x,075,f-pad,750x1000,f8f8f8.u1.jpg>
>   * <https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-uySospxlKYo/W7h6aThDRmI/AAAAAAAACmc/a8PsZzgrZuskl8I_zwxtljOwwj6XvszIQCLcBGAs/s1600/men-tattoos-sleeve.jpg>
>   * <https://www.thisistattoo.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/tattoo-glow-ideas-24.jpg>
>   * <https://i.pinimg.com/originals/35/93/32/359332c55e7515cdf60e3ad807571ae0.jpg>
>   * <https://cdn.tattoozza.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/50-2-800x800.jpg>
>   * <https://i.pinimg.com/564x/37/72/72/3772727ff63893a9b353b40d2ac245b4.jpg>
>   * <https://i.pinimg.com/564x/ab/9f/a6/ab9fa6367775a89a19a98b4ab627a027.jpg>
> 

> 
> And, for anyone curious how Jack and Kayla look next to each other: <https://drive.google.com/file/d/1IVEOYowO0xqvu0FXVtZnQa-H7Cmr_JiG/view?usp=sharing>


End file.
